Masquerade and Gender: Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions by Women

Catherine  A. Craft-Fairchild

Published by Penn State University Press 1993

Masquerade and Gender

Disguise and Female Identity in Eighteenth-Century Fictions by Women

Catherine A. Craft-Fairchild

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780271074863

Overview
Contents

About this book

Terry Castle's recent study of masquerade follows Bakhtin's analysis of the carnivalesque to conclude that, for women, masquerade offered exciting possibilities for social and sexual freedom. Castle's interpretation conforms to the fears expressed by male writers during the period—Addison, Steele, and Fielding all insisted that masquerade allowed women to usurp the privileges of men. Female authors, however, often mistrusted these claims, perceiving that masquerade's apparent freedoms were frequently nothing more than sophisticated forms of oppression.

Catherine Craft-Fairchild's work provides a useful corrective to Castle's treatment of masquerade. She argues that, in fictions by Aphra Behn, Mary Davys, Eliza Haywood, Elizabeth Inchbald, and Frances Burney, masquerade is double-sided. It is represented in some cases as a disempowering capitulation to patriarchal strictures that posit female subordination. Often within the same text, however, masquerade is also depicted as an empowering defiance of the dominant norms for female behavior. Heroines who attempt to separate themselves from the image of womanhood they consciously construct escape victimization. In both cases, masquerade is the condition of femininity: gender in the woman's novel is constructed rather than essential.

Craft-Fairchild examines the guises in which womanhood appears, analyzing the ways in which women writers both construct and deconstruct eighteenth-century cultural conceptions of femininity. She offers a careful and engaging textual analysis of both canonical and noncanonical eighteenth-century texts, thereby setting lesser-read fictions into a critical dialogue with more widely known novels. Detailed readings are informed throughout by the ideas of current feminist theorists, including Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, Mary Ann Doane, and Kaja Silverman. Instead of assuming that fictions about women were based on biological fact, Craft-Fairchild stresses the opposite: the domestic novel itself constructs the domestic woman.

Author / Editor information

Craft-Fairchild Catherine A. :

Catherine Craft-Fairchild is Assistant Professor of English at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Minnesota.

Reviews

“An exceptionally well-written and fascinating study. This book should make an important contribution to the growing field of feminist work on the eighteenth century.”
—Kristina Straub, Carnegie Mellon University

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
1. Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
2. Aphra Behn's The Dumb Virgin and Mary Davys's The Accomplished Rake: The Darker Side of Masquerade Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
3. Eliza Haywood and the Masquerade of Femininity Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	51
4. Elizabeth Inchbald's Not So Simple Story Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	75
5. Feminine Excess: Frances Burney's The Wanderer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	123
Conclusion Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	163
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	175
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	185

Language: English
Publisher: Penn State University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 204
Keywords: Catherine A. Craft-Fairchild; 0-271-02582-4; Literature; English; Terry Castle; Bakhtin; Addison; Steele; Fielding; Aphra Behn; Mary Davys; Eliza Haywood; Elizabeth Inchbald; Frances Burney; social norms; female behavior; feminism; femininity; gender issues; sexual freedom; Luce Irigaray; Julia Kristeva; Mary Ann Doane; Kaja Silverman; womanhood

eBook

Published: May 26, 2021
ISBN: 9780271074863